It’s been an interesting start to 2024 to say the least. While last year threw us a couple of curve balls, like the massive popularity of Baldur’s Gate 3, this year, we’ve already seen indie hit Palworld hit record-breaking numbers in an instant and then drop players’ interest almost as quickly. Now Helldivers 2, a sequel to a pretty decently received game from 2015, is topping the charts, and we’ve still got a little over 10 months left in the year as I’m writing this.

While Helldivers 2 is a great multiplayer experience, I’m not really holding my breath that it’s really a GOTY contender just yet, as it could easily see a huge player dropoff over the coming weeks as we all wait around for the next big flash in the pan. And one of the things that keeps me from going full burn on helldiving in is its lack of a backstory.

Do Multiplayer Games Even Need A Story?

Now, to be fair, multiplayer games don’t necessarily need a lot of context and backstory to enjoy — that’s what you and your friends are for. But looking at its opening cinemetic, loaded with hyperpatriotic, pro-Super Earth military propaganda, I feel like we’re missing out on a lot of comedic charm once the actual game starts. Sure Helldivers 2 provides a lot of funny moments for new players, but that little joy comes in the form of pratfalls and accidentally blowing up your friends or yourself, and the better you get at the game, the fewer and further between those moments will be. Besides, that kind of comedy can’t fuel a whole show. A good farce is about more than people slamming doors and shouting in bad cockney accents, after all, and pies in the face should be used sparingly.

Fallout has always thrived on a similar Uncle Sam “I WANT YOU” propaganda vibe that Bethesda only leaned more heavily into after acquiring the IP and taking the games to a 3D format. Again, two completely different genres of game, but even if you’re not wandering around peaceful settlements and taking story-heavy quests from long-winded NPCs, that vibe is still one that’s missing for the most part from Helldivers 2, and it’s a hook that could really make it stand out from the crowd of other online team-based shooters.

Let’s put Fallout’s hyperpatroitism aside for a moment and shift to the similarly ridiculous critique that The Outer Worlds brought to hypercapitalism. That game’s a riot, and while it’s still a single-player game with a lot of RPG-heavy elements, it paints a hilarious dark comedy about how the trajectory that our society’s obsession over chasing wealth devalues every human life except for the powerful few at the top. It’s chock-full of dialogue to help it paint that picture, but it’s not the only game that can provide that feeling.

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Dialogue Isn’t Needed To Build The Hook

Enter Lethal Company. If you’re not familiar with it, Lethal Company is a squad-based game set in an alternate future. Your team of up to four players is issued a company ship and a few credits to buy equipment, although it’s a paltry amount, and at first, you won’t be able to afford anything more than a few flashlights and radios, which provide no protection from the alien monsters filling the abandoned facilities you’ve got to explore. I say “got to,” because your mission is to bring back pieces of scrap from these bases to sell to the company every three days, and if you don’t meet your monetary quotas, you get the only real recorded line in the game — a cheery sounding employee coming over your ship’s loudspeaker to let you know that you’re just not profitable enough to exist — before your ship’s airlock pops open and you and your crew are sucked out to a chilly death in the blackness of space.

There’s no one to talk to in Lethal Company outside of your human-controlled teammates — even the character taking your hard-won goods at the company counter is just a monstrous tentacle that pops briefly out of a window to grab your stuff — but the game gives you enough ambiance in its backstory and environment to add some dark humor to the repetitive grind.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with the “bugs bad, robots bad” mindset in Helldivers 2, but I worry that the gameplay will lose its allure over time, and we’ll all move onto the next thing. Thanks to the trailer, the groundwork’s already there to add in more ’50s-tastic pomp and circumstance to humanity’s epic struggle for its continued existence. I don’t know whether Arrowhead Game Studios will lean into it like Bethesda did with the Fallout series, or be able to coyly work it in like Zeekerss did with Lethal Company, but I think it’s just the trick Helldivers 2 needs to stay at the top of the charts.

Helldivers 2

Released

February 8, 2024

Developer(s)

Arrowhead Game Studios AB